


compromise

by heyfightme



Category: Captain America (Movies), Marvel Cinematic Universe
Genre: F/F, also everybody loves steve, fixing ca:cw with lesbians
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-05-28
Updated: 2016-05-28
Packaged: 2018-07-10 17:47:20
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 5,604
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/6998389
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/heyfightme/pseuds/heyfightme
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>She kisses her, strongly and slowly, in a way that is all lips until Sharon says, “Public displays of affection make people uncomfortable.” Nat murmurs, “We’re not in public,” and licks at the seam of Sharon’s smiling mouth.</p><p>Her heart is racing, she can feel the taut muscles of Sharon’s stomach under her hands, Sharon’s hair smells like a tropical drink, and Natasha Romanov is in love.</p><p>---</p><p>In which Nat tries to deal with a few different forms of love, and thinks she finally understands Steve Rogers. A Captain America perspective shift.</p>
            </blockquote>





	compromise

**Author's Note:**

> This is highly self-indulgent, and largely a way for me to settle CA:CW in my mind. It also makes up for missed opportunities and attempts to rationalise some strange decisions on the part of the film writers (I think we all know what I'm talking about).
> 
> Plus, everything is better with wlw.

WASHINGTON D.C.

 

Her name is Sharon. She’s nice.

 

Nat fits a smile on to her mouth, and Steve gives her one back, and something in the back of her mind hums quietly as she _knows_ he isn’t going to make the call. It’s in his face, in the way he looks at the folder in his hands.

 

She could say more, things she knows would convince him. Like how Sharon listens to jazz, and likes reading biographies, and once cried at the Art Institute of Chicago while standing in front of a sculpture by Francesco Mochi. Like how she runs eight miles every morning and can bench-press one-hundred-fifty pounds. Like how she worked her way up from beat cop to S.H.I.E.L.D Agent, and is now applying for the C.I.A, and how Nat knows she’s going to be running it someday. Like how she’s the fourth best shot Natasha knows, and she was never raised in a circus or trained by assassins or brainwashed by Nazis. Like how she is absolutely weak when it comes to spicy food and can barely handle the mild sauce at Chipotle. Like how she drinks her coffee black but sweet, and can’t stand tea despite coaxing from her English aunt. Like how she smells like coconuts, and wears pomegranate lip balm.

 

Like how easy she is to fall in love with.

 

Instead of saying any of that, Nat just steps forward, leans up, and presses a soft kiss to Steve’s cheek. She can be gentle too.

 

The look in his eyes is fond, appreciative. Behind it she can still see the shadow of something raw and animal. She was right: he’s not going to stop.

 

“Be careful, Steve. You might not want to pull on that thread.”

 

She protects herself, as usual. She walks away.

 

\---

 

SOMEWHERE IN NEW YORK STATE

 

She hears from Sharon eleven months later. It’s the first time in two years. Well, the first time that Sharon contacts her. After _everything_ in D.C., after she had told Steve to make the call, she had sent off her own text to the contact listed in her phone only as _13_.

 

1:13

_i told steve you were nice_

Well. Two texts.

 

1:21

_he’s nice too_

She had received one in return.

 

5:47

_Natasha._

 

She’s standing in this steel-and-glass palatial warehouse that Stark has constructed, and Fury tells her, “No matter who wins or loses, the trouble still comes around,” and he walks away, and her phone goes _bloop_.

 

It would seem like a sign, if Natasha Romanov believed in signs.

14:39

_Are you all ok?_

 

Nat frowns. _Ok?_ Ok was relative. Ok was a beating heart, and an intact body. Ok was still having four out of five in places she could find them, and four new additions besides. Ok was continuing, forwards, onwards, upwards.

 

But then again.

 

They had levelled an entire _country_. Banner was gone, and that was a personal failure in itself: she’d been responsible for him sticking around. Wanda’s brother was dead. She wouldn’t say it to anyone, not again, but she had completely and quietly accepted (hell, _embraced_ ) the fact of her own death. Steve had too.

 

Steve.

 

He was another _then again_.

 

She texts Sharon back.

 

14:42

_mostly_

14:43

_steve isnt_

Because who can she really talk to about Steve? Sam is absolutely not an option, being firmly in the “ _he’ll get there when he gets there”_ camp – the natural path to self acceptance. Sam has also parked himself in the _“I’m his friend, not his counsellor”_ camp, which Nat just finds reductive. Tony fundamentally and resolutely misunderstands Steve, viewing him as a comic book cutout, two-dimensional and without any shading. Tony doesn’t get that Steve’s not righteous: he’s an _avenger_. More than any of them, he’s an avenger.

 

14:45

_He’s not as nice as you say, by the way._

Nat stares at the screen. What does that mean? That he called, and they dated, and it didn’t work? That Steve stood her up? That he said something stupid about her hair? That he –

 

14:46

_He never called me._

14:47

_First text should have been: are YOU ok?_

No, she decides. She’s not.

 

\---

 

LAGOS

 

She can hear it faintly, on the communicator: Rumlow taunting Steve. She hears him say “ _your Bucky,_ ” and she starts running.

 

It’s like a shut-down switch, she knows it. She knows that when he hears it, he won’t be able to continue. That he’ll fuck up, and he’ll fuck up big, and his life --

“What did you say?”

It’s in his voice already. She’s heard Tony say before that Steve is squeaky clean, that he’s unendingly pure and is the greatest good the world’s ever going to get. She hasn’t said it out loud, but Stark has never been more wrong.

 

Snippets crackle through the communicator, somehow making it over the heavy rasp of her own breathing as she throws herself down the streets.

_“I was there –_

She pushes through the linked hands of a middle-aged couple.

– _brain back in a blender —_

She launches herself over the bonnet of a car.

_Please tell Rogers —_

She clips a wing mirror as she runs past, tearing it from the door.

–  _you’re coming with me.”_

She’s not there, she’s not going to _get there_ , and Steve’s let himself get distracted, and she hears herself scream “ _NO_ ,” before the south side of the building ahead explodes in a hurricane of fire.

 

There are four beats where she runs in silence

 

She can distinctly see pieces of debris fluttering through the air. They twist and tumble as they descend. It’s confetti. It’s a parade. It’s the end of the world.

 

“— south side of the building.”

 

She almost _laughs_ , because it’s so improbable and yet she can’t believe she ever doubted it. Doubted him, really, because although Steve Rogers has been waiting to die for seventy years, he hasn’t managed it yet.

 

She sees Wanda, knees in the dirt, looking up at the building, and Nat knows the feeling that’s on her face. It’s seeing your own hands twist the life out of another human, and pushing too hard and getting blood on the wall, and Sharon lying in a hospital bed with an IV in her arm.

 

It’s being scared of yourself.

 

Nat catches a flash of blue, darting around the building towards what is surely the door. She looks back to Wanda. She thinks, forcefully and directly, _Thank you_.

 

She runs after Steve.

 

\---

 

SOMEWHERE IN NEW YORK STATE

 

Steve bolts out of a team meeting that is quickly becoming a bloodbath.

 

He’s on a plane before she can say so much as _I have to, Steve_. He doesn’t say why.

 

He and Sam fly out the same night the rest of them sign the accords, which seems as much of a “fuck you” to Tony as it is a sign of a desperate man.

 

She sighs. She knew he wouldn’t understand why – or, maybe, _couldn’t_. She still wanted to look him in the eye and try to explain herself.

 

She had been looking at Wanda, looking at how she tilted her body ever to slightly toward Vision, how quickly he had interjected in her defence. She had thought, blithely, _I never had a shield when I was her age_.

 

A grey harbor flashed into her mind, and candles lit in every window of a faintly pink building, and a glaringly white sky. She thought of Sharon’s blonde hair clipped back in chunks from her face, one eye locked in the sniper sight. She thought of sticky fingers pulling apart _korvapuusti_ , and Sharon buckling a thigh holster under her skirt. She thought of halogen lights and starchy sheets, and smell of antiseptic.

 

Nat had tried to say, with hands clasped together on top of Sharon’s bedspread, “This was all a mistake.”

 

She had tried to say it, but she didn’t really mean it.

 

She has worn many faces, and Natasha Romanov is just another one of those. She hides lies behind _you’re not asking the right questions_. But Sharon had run the rough of her knuckles over the scar on Natasha’s stomach, and Nat had told her the story of the Winter Soldier. Sharon had curled her thigh around Nat’s waist and used Nat’s fingers to trace the mangled flesh along her flank. A blast, she had said. Don’t wear yoga pants while undercover, she added. Nat had chased Sharon’s leg with her lips, mouthing along the puckers and ridges in the skin, tracing up and up to beige cotton panties. They had been damp.

 

So sitting beside that hospital bed, all she manages to say is, “I’m selfish.”

 

Sharon’s eyelashes had fluttered in a way that suggested she was attempting to roll her eyes, and she had croaked, “It’s called guilt.”

 

Nat had wanted to say, no. No, this wasn’t guilt, because she had felt guilt before and it wasn’t at all like this.

 

Reading Nat’s mind the way she always could, Sharon inched her fingers across the sheets and forced her hand between Natasha’s.

 

“I made an executive decision,” she said with as much strength as someone on that much morphine could muster.

“You turned yourself into a human shield.”

“Well, we are Agents of…” She trailed off, and Nat’s lips twitched despite herself. “My kidney versus your head. Seemed like a no-brainer.”

“It was a tactical error,” Nat had forced herself to say. “If you hadn’t… _shielded_ me, you could have made the shot while he was distracted.”

“So you’re the only one who’s allowed to be a martyr?”

Nat had frowned, on the verge of anger. Anger. That was a new feeling after a mission, even the ones that had gone wrong.

“Fury put me in charge of this mission, and I gave you direct orders to neutralise the target before anything else.”

“We _did_ neutralise the target.” Sharon was doing an admirable job of sounding condescending, even with a drug-scratched voice and an oxygen tube in her nose.

 

Nat hadn’t realised she’d been squeezing Sharon’s hand harder and harder until her own fingers started to cramp. She had loosened her hold, but slumped down so her forehead was resting on the back of Sharon’s wrist.

 

“I was compromised.” She sounded certain, sure. Like the Sharon Nat was used to. “I _am_ compromised. So we should probably put in a request not to be assigned together any more.”

 

Nat had rolled her head to the side, looking up at Sharon from the mattress. She had been looking back, with a definitive jut in her jaw.

 

“I don’t want that,” Nat had said firmly. “We’re a team. We’re _better_ as a team.”

“Then _this_ is the best case scenario.” She slapped the bed with her free hand. “And I’m not going to pretend that I would rather me die than you die, because you’d see through that in a second, but I think we both know that there is no good ending to this.”

 

She shook their joined hands, prompting Nat to look in to her eyes.

 

“Staying together is more important than how we stay together.”

 

Nat couldn’t do anything else. She had dropped Sharon’s hand, cupped her cheek instead, and pressed their lips together. She had tasted salt.

 

Standing in the the furniture-showroom-sterility of Tony’s Avengers living room, she gets a blast from her phone’s news app about the founder of S.H.I.E.L.D.

 

She books a flight to London.

 

\---

 

LONDON

 

Even with hounding the driver to weave his way through traffic and the tip she slipped into his fist to push the speed limit, she only makes it to the church as the ceremony is letting out.

 

Sharon is standing on the stone steps, cheeks bright and eyes hard. Her hair is tucked behind her ears. It’s longer than when Nat last saw her, though she’s probably also had it cut since then.

 

Black is a good colour on her.

 

Natasha feels melodramatic, climbing out of the sleek car in her inky trench coat. Sharon sees her, and her expression doesn’t change.

 

There is a _pull_ in Nat’s gut, something that makes her want to run up the stairs and fold herself in to Sharon’s body. She resists, and takes the steps slowly with the carefully cultivated self-control she knows has become part of who she is. _This_ is Natasha Romanov.

 

She stops on the step down from Sharon, looking up in to her face. The dull London sky is flat behind her.

 

She says, “I’m sorry I’m late.”

 

Sharon waits a moment, looks back over her shoulder, then drops down to Natasha’s step and lets herself fall in to Nat’s body. Nat’s arms come up, and her hands cling to the thick fabric of Sharon’s coat, and Natasha feels fierce.

 

Sharon isn’t crying, isn’t saying anything. She makes no noise at all. She just holds on to Nat with stoic strength, allowing herself to be held in return. Nat can feel the thigh holster through the dress Sharon is wearing, and knows that Sharon can feel hers too.

 

It feels appropriate, for Margaret Carter’s funeral.

 

Sharon steps back, and reaches up a slender hand to sweep some of Nat’s curls over her shoulder.

“Your hair’s longer again.”

“I regret it every time I cut it. Seems to coincide with everything going to total shit.”

Sharon smiles wryly. “Shouldn’t you be in Vienna about now?”

“I’ve got time.”

 

“I had to do the eulogy, because she asked me to. She had it all planned out. Didn’t leave a thing to chance, picked everything from the church to the photo at the front –“ she laughs “– to the pallbearers. If only she’d written the damn speech as well.” She laughs, again, bitterly. “The only thing I could think about while I was writing it was, ‘I should ask Nat to help me. She always has had a way with words.’”

“I think you’re the only person who would say that. What did you end up going with?”

“Peggy the trailblazer. Peggy the role model. Peggy who always knew what to say.” She looks in to Nat’s eyes, and fits a cool hand around Nat’s cheek. “She would have loved you.” Natasha breathes out, eyes locked on Sharon’s.

“What can I do to make this okay?”

“I was prepared for this, believe it or not. Peggy and I spoke about it, more than once. I’ll grieve, but I’ll recover. I’m not the one you have to worry about.” She inclines her head towards the church.

 

Nat steps away from Sharon’s hand on her jaw, and makes her way up the steps.

 

She already knows what she’s going to say to him.

 

\---

 

VIENNA

 

The outside is a commotion of bodies, the air feels hot and gritty, and there is a faint buzzing in Natasha’s ears.

 

Despite this, she feels calm.

 

Her phone buzzes in her hand. She expects it to be Steve, or Nick, but the number 13 lights up the display, picture of a palm tree splashed across the screen.

 

“Where are you?” Sharon’s voice is hard. There is commotion in the background.

“I’m outside. They made me see a medic.”

“No, where specifically?”

 

Nat looks around her, looks for defining markers of the location. “I’m just inside the barricade; forensics tent near –“

“Never mind, I’ve got you.”

 

She whips around, and Sharon strides out of the crowd, tucking her phone back in to her pocket. Her hair is still loose, and her expression is still hard. She’s wearing a navy windbreaker that probably has something official written on the back. Nat says, “We have to stop meeting like this.” Sharon grips her by the upper arms and takes stock of her body. She moves her hands to frame Nat’s jaw, and tilts her head from side to side. She uses her thumb to swipe at something on Nat’s cheek. Ash, probably. Satisfied, she steps back.

“Twice in twenty-four hours. This is a new record for us.”

“What have you heard?”

 

Sharon looks down and away, then sharply back at Nat. She holds her gaze.

“I may as well tell you, because it’s all over the news anyway. We have security camera footage of someone who we’ve identified as James Buchanan Barnes leaving the scene.” She says it clinically, professionally, like she’s talking to the press. Nat’s hand clenches around her phone. The back of her mind hisses _Steve_.

 

“It’s in the hands of the taskforce now,” Sharon is saying. “We’re gathering intel, and we’re going to bring him in.”

“Do you really think that’s possible?” She can already see the spiralling of events, the series of cascading failures that ends with the Winter Soldier’s metal arm clamped around Sharon’s throat.

 

Sharon regards her carefully, brow furrowed. She opens her mouth to say something, but a voice calls, “Agent Carter,” and her head whips around.

“I have to go,” she says as she turns, already striding off to assert and direct and take control.

 

\---

 

BERLIN

 

They’ve arrested Captain America.

 

While Nat _knows_ it’s not the first time Steve’s been arrested (“I was never charged, Nat”), she would doubtless find this hilarious if she weren’t so furious with him.

 

As imprisonment goes, though, she doesn’t think he can complain too much.

 

Sharon has been tasked with minding them, sequestered off in a glass box of a room that can be supervised from all angles. She wonders if Sharon also feels like they’re disciplining belligerent teenagers who snuck out to see that friend who’s a bad influence. As they watch the feed of Barnes’ interrogation, the back of Nat’s neck prickles. She can’t help but feel the divide, now so much more obvious, the blatant _us_ and _them_ that everything has become.

 

Now, apparently, Sharon is part of the _them_.

 

Nat supposes she shouldn’t be surprised. She had encouraged Sharon and Steve to connect, from both sides. She had played a strategic offence. And really, Nat would be lying to herself if she said they weren’t compatible.

 

She’d be lying even more if she thought for a second that Sharon would have picked the accords.

 

She checks her shoulder, just for a moment, but it’s long enough to gauge the glass box behind her: Sharon hovers. Sam sits. And Steve.

 

Steve is watching the monitor with a sick kind of intensity. Anyone who ever said Steve Rogers is a bad liar was an idiot, because to an outside party he would in this moment appear to be watching with a cool interest. Nat, however, can see his tells. Can see the muscle twitching in his jaw. Can see the way he keeps his hands in his pockets, holding himself back. Can see the unblinking focus in his stare.

 

“My name is Bucky.”

 

She almost flinches. She doesn’t need to look around to know that Steve isn’t looking at the screen. Not for the first time, she thinks _what would I do if…?_

She steals another glance. Steve is no longer in that room: it’s Captain America, taking charge and giving commands. What’s more is Sharon is supporting them, acting right-hand-woman while Sam observes, stoic.

 

They make a good team.

 

“I don’t want to talk about it.”

Nat thinks _Me neither, pal_ , and then the lights go out.

 

Nat whips her head around.

 

Steve and Sam run in to the dark.

 

\---

 

BERLIN

 

Nat’s almost thankful for the commotion. It means she can hand over to her instincts, and let everything else flow through. Step one: coordinate your support.

 

Tony, it turns out, is useless.

 

But then Sharon runs past, orders “Follow me,” and Nat feels old patterns sliding back in to place. She puts herself at Sharon’s six.

“Weapons?”

“No time,” Sharon calls back, still powering on. “He broke containment and is heading up. Surveillance puts him in the cafe.”

 

She can hear Tony trotting to keep up behind them. “I have a thing. It’s a small development, something I’ve been working on, wearable tech that –“

“Fine, Stark, you go in first. Use it, incapacitate.” Sharon pulls back the pace and allows Tony to take the front. “Stark, don’t – incapacitate only. Don’t – “ She breaks off again, then finishes with, “We’re taking him alive.”

 

Nat can hear the echoes of Steve in the order, and knows where Sharon’s considerations are right now. It makes her run harder.

“Once Tony’s knocked down –“ Tony makes an aborted noise of protest “—we go in.”

“Together?”

“Trading off. Like that huge Russian in Helsinki, remember?”

“What kind of question is that?”

 

Tony remarks, “I, for one, would love to hear more about Helsinki,” before Sharon taps him toward the wall and motions for him to check the room. Barnes is in there, a machine.

 

It feels like seconds between Tony entering the room and Sharon hissing, “Now,” when Nat sees Sharon dart towards Barnes and offer a forceful kick to his gut. Nat is right behind her, following up with knees and forearms when Sharon is pushed out of the way. It’s petty, but she punches him in the groin for good measure. _See all the trouble people go to for you?_

 

She ducks, and Sharon fills the gap in the air above her. Her round kick lands on his shoulder, and he grabs her and throws her down on to a table, and Nat _snaps_.

 

It happens without thinking, ignoring the things she knows about the Winter Soldier, ignoring the voice in the back of her head telling her to _stay behind,_ to _go for the arm_. She’s straddling his neck, and raining blows on his head. And then she’s flat back on a table and his arm, _his hand_ , it’s on her throat and it was such a rookie mistake and there’s no going back from here –

 

\-- and then T’Challa launches him out of the way. Nat gasps, chokes, sputters for air, clutching at her throat. Before she gets a proper chance to regain normal breathing patterns, she’s being hauled off the table and pulled down the café towards one of the stone columns. Sharon presses her against the concrete by her shoulders.

“What did you think you were doing?” Sharon’s hands slips from her shoulders to her neck, thumbs pushing lightly in to collarbones, as Sharon stares intently at the redness where Barnes’ metal hand was. “It was a _stupid_ move, Nat, you forgot his arm _entirely_.”

“I thought you were out. I reacted.”

 

It’s almost oddly quiet as Sharon uses her grip on Nat to pull them both across to a different column. She presses her own back into the stone, slides her hands down to Nat’s upper arms, and leans down to touch her forehead to Nat’s.

 

She can smell coconuts.

 

\---

 

HELSINKI

 

“They’re about to clock us.”

 

They were both in neutral tones, both wearing flat boots, both with sunglasses fitted over their eyes, and Nat was holding a camera that was attached to her by a strap around her neck. Sharon had a backpack with several patches sewn on to it, and was examining a snow globe. Flakes of glitter rained down on _Helsingin tuomiokirkko_. She had her eyes subtly trained on a mirror over the sunglass rack, watching the two gold-chain-and-vee-neck-wearing lookouts behind them.

“If things were different, this would be where I kiss you,” Nat muses.

“Public displays of affection make people very uncomfortable.”

 

Nat can’t help it. She smiles slowly, raising her camera to take a snap of Sharon like this, looking like a college student on a backpacking gap year.

 

“It’s a foolproof distraction tactic. However, considering the circumstances, it might attract more attention than it deflects. Which means our only option…”

 

She snatches a snow globe from the display and hurls it at the taller guy on their tail, hitting him square on the temple. He goes down like a stack of bricks, and his partner looks momentarily surprised.

 

Nat shouts, _“Go!”_ and runs.

 

Helsinki’s streets are a mix of cobblestones and concrete, flat and inclined, straight and twisted. Nat has made sure that she learned them all. It only takes her four minutes to slip away from the one following her and lose him in a crowd. She continues through the maze, and it’s in a narrow alleyway that she’s shoved against a brick wall. She goes for the knife strapped to her back, about to unsheathe and drive it between her assailant’s ribs, but then she catches a flash of blonde.

 

Sharon is breathing hard, hair windswept.

 

She’s still holding the snow globe.

 

Nat can’t help it; she smirks. “You’re a criminal,” she says, pointing at the stolen trinket.

 

Sharon looks down, and seems genuinely surprised at what she’s holding. She shakes it, watches the glitter fall for a moment, then starts to laugh. Brightly. Happily.

 

Nat steps forward and uses the straps of Sharon’s backpack to guide her to the wall on the opposite side of the alley. She tangles her fingers in the hair at the base of Sharon’s neck and uses her grip to bring Sharon’s face down to meet hers.

 

She kisses her, strongly and slowly, in a way that is all lips until Sharon says, “Public displays of affection make people uncomfortable.” Nat murmurs, “We’re not in public,” and licks at the seam of Sharon’s smiling mouth.

 

Her heart is racing, she can feel the taut muscles of Sharon’s stomach under her hands, Sharon’s hair smells like a tropical drink, and Natasha Romanov is in love.

 

\---

 

BERLIN

 

After T’Challa is driven away in that knife-sharp car with that smoking gun of a woman in the front seat ( _entertaining_ was maybe not the word Nat would have used to describe her), Nat thumbs out a phone call. She makes her tone indifferent.

 

“A vibranium shield and bird costume have been logged as missing from the CIA storage lockers.”

Sharon snorts. “Anything about a missing special agent?”

 

“They’re going to come looking for you,” Nat says, and it’s a plea as much as a warning. _Don’t disappear from me_ , she wants to say. _I can’t love a ghost_.

“That’s what Steve said.” Of course he did.

“You have to tell me where they’re going.”

 

Sharon is silent over the phone line, for a moment. Then – “You love him.”

 

Nat knows what Sharon means, but she doesn’t bother to clarify her reply. “Yes.”

 

“We kissed. I kissed him.”

“Of course you did. He’s Steve Rogers, and the world is about to end. That’s the only time when Steve Rogers gets kissed.” She means it as a joke, but Sharon just sighs wetly.

“I felt like everyone was watching, and waiting for it to happen. I could see those two _idiots_ sitting in that stupid car, and I know Sam keeps telling him to get out there, to date. And Barnes, _Jesus_ , _Barnes_.” Nat’s hand forms a fist. Muscle memory. “I could see him, when I stepped away, when Steve wasn’t looking. He just looked so… It was like he suddenly understood nothing at all. It was like I just had this moment, this a-ha moment, and I can’t _believe_ I didn’t see it before.” She sniffs, and Nat is startled that after everything, _this_ is what is making Sharon Carter cry. “But you kept saying he was nice, and Peggy always told me he was the greatest man she’d ever known, and you seemed to want me to move on so badly. I just — “

 

Nat presses her forehead into the concrete of the wall. She says, summoning clichés and platitudes, “It’s not like that.”

 

Sharon just laughs, a bubble bursting to the surface from ocean depths. “I can’t believe you thought you needed to say that. I know it’s not like that, I’m not an idiot.” She coughs, and then absolutely floors Nat with a single sentence. “It’s not like that for him, either.” Natasha isn’t rattled easily, but –

“What do you mean?”

“Come on, Nat.” Sharon is the master of condescension. Nat lives for it. “We used to compromise each other.” Nat wants to scream _you still do_. “There’s this famous story about Steve, about how he got the faith of the command. When he rescued the 107 th from Kreischberg. Has he told you about it?”

“No,” Nat manages. “But I did study US History.” For intel and establishing cover, but Sharon knows that.

“Aunt Peggy told me she’d been with him when he decided to go. He’d found out that Barnes might be dead, so he stole a gun and loaded up a truck and was ready to just about drive until he ran out of gas, and then walk to Austria alone. She said to him, ‘he’s probably dead, there’s no point.’ He refused to accept that. She convinced Howard Stark to fly him in. She said she spoke to Timothy Dugan after they all made it back, to figure out what happened, and he said that Steve freed them all from the cells and could have left with them with relative ease. But he went looking for Barnes. They were still inside the facility when it started to self-destruct.” She pauses. “It was a stupid, reckless decision. But it was an executive decision.”

 

Nat hears it like an echo. She almost laughs.

“You’re not seriously suggesting that –“

“I’m not suggesting, I’m _saying_. He’s compromised. And you of all people cannot honestly be surprised about who it’s over.” When the thought finally enters Natasha’s head, it’s like it had been there all along. She doesn’t feel anything about it, just a faint settling. Right.

 

“You need to tell me where he is. He’s going to –“

“—get himself killed. I know. I also know you’re going to do the right thing. So I’ll tell you where they went. Nat?”

“Sharon?”

“I love him too.”

 

It almost sounds like “I love _you_.”

 

\---

 

SOMEWHERE IN NEW YORK STATE

 

Steve had said, “You know I can’t,” and Nat had wanted to say, “I think I finally do.”

 

Because if it had been a different Russian assassin, and a different blonde hero, Nat can finally say with some certainty that she knows the call that would have been made. She can finally say with some certainty that she knows the call she would _want_ to be made.

 

So she’s not going to apologise. Especially not to Tony. But she can’t help playing damage control.

 

He says, “They’re coming for you,” and he sounds so god damn smug about it that she can’t stop the threat that slips out of her mouth. As she walks away, she can hear the echo of his words still, intertwined with those she used to warn Sharon, and what Sharon had told her Steve had said. She hears _come_ , over and over, repeated infinitely.

 

It’s a more inviting prospect than _go_.

 

She can’t see where the invitation is coming from, though. It’s alright. Natasha has run alone before.

 

She has worn many faces.

 

\---

 

LJUBLJANA

 

Her passport calls her Andreja Preložnik. She’s cut her hair, short back and sides and a rough tumble on top. She can’t bring herself to dye it. Andreja lives in a studio apartment in Ljubljana. She takes shifts at a café, and wears t-shirts and jeans. She likes hats. She smiles at people and talks to them, but she doesn’t make friends. She doesn’t have a phone.

 

On a Thursday, she arrives home and finds a postcard in her letterbox. The front has a picture of a plane flying low over a beach. The colours are glaring: pale white gold. Crisp blue. Glittering turquoise. Thin lettering wishes her _Greetings from St. Martin._ The back bears three words in straight, even capital letters.

 

_An executive decision._

 

Underneath, _xx_.

 

Nat packs a lone suitcase and calls a cab.

 

\---

 

PHILIPSBURG

 

The building is the colour of a flamingo. There is a set of plastic garden furniture on the sandy paving stones outside, bright turquoise under a coral umbrella. The balconies are edged with white lattice, and runty palm trees line the fence.

 

Nat has a large white sunhat, and wears flip flops on her feet. They slap pleasingly on the pavement, audible above the drag of her suitcase wheels on the hot stone. She folds the handle back down to hoist it up the stairs on the outside of the building. A man with bright teeth and ochre forearms meets her halfway, and holds out a hand.

“ _Puis-je vous aider?_ ”

Nat resists the urge to raise an eyebrow, rather fixing a genial smile on to her face and gushing out “ _Non, merci_ ,” with a determined grace. She continues up the stairs, and can feel his eyes on her ass.

 

The door to apartment 23 is white and completely blemish-free. The number screwed in to the wood is a gleaming gold, and it’s making Nat want to buy chains and rings and bracelets to wear with her bathing suit. She lifts a hand and raps on the door.

 

She can feel the seconds ticking in her pulse, falling away and increasing the possibilities of _wrong time_ , _wrong house_ , _wrong island_ , _too late_. The familiar heat of panic starts climbing its way from under her collar, splashing red across her neck and cheeks. She’s flushed when the door finally swings open.

 

Sharon has cut her hair. It brushes her shoulders, parted in the center and tucked behind her ears. She’s wearing a blue cotton shirt and denim shorts. She’s barefoot. Her face is free of makeup, and it is completely unsurprised.

 

But she is smiling.

“Took you long enough.”

**Author's Note:**

> Apologies to Tony fans. I didn't mean to make him such a bastard.
> 
> Come find me on tumblr! I'm heyfightme again.


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